FROM THE STANDPOINT of GLBT rights, it now seems likely—although by no means certain—that 2008 will be the year in which the political system caught up to the country. I do not always subscribe to the view that the public is ahead of the politicians in terms of enlightenment, but on the question of protecting people against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, the voters have been ahead of the politicians.
The clearest example of this tendency of elected officials to impute more prejudice to the electorate than actually exists came in the analysis that grew to be accepted after the elections of 2002 and 2004. Perceived wisdom among many political experts was that Democrats had paid a high price because of the party’s advocacy of GLBT rights, among other social issues. Social conservatism had trumped economic liberalism, the pundits concluded, and too many Democrats were ready to buy into that conclusion. The Republicans not only believed this, they acted on it—to their ultimate disadvantage.
The first manifestation of the Republicans’ view that the social issues were the way to further entrench themselves came as one of the greatest political—and moral—miscalculations in recent history: the Terri Schiavo case. Republicans seized on the chance to enact legislation overruling the decision of Terri Schiavo’s husband that life in any meaningful sense had long since left her, as well as the opinion of the entire court system of Florida that had found his decision to be legally unassailable. And while it was the Republicans who pressed the advantage, a number of Democrats feared that the legislation overturning the Florida court’s acceptance of Michael Schiavo’s decision was too popular to resist. The U.S. Senate passed the bill on one day’s deliberation without a roll call. When it came to the House, several of us opposed it, and, while I think we won the debate, we lost the vote overwhelmingly: not only did 97% of the Republicans vote for the bill, we got a bare majority of Democrats against it—53 to 47.
Of course the public reaction was exactly the opposite of what most politicians thought it would be, and the outrage at this political interference with the question of when to accept that life had ended was both broad and strong. It turned out that most Americans were able to draw a very straightforward conclusion: if you think the decision about when to accept the end of life should not be made politically, you should not ask 536 politicians to make it.
But while the Republicans were forced to accept that the Schiavo case had been unpopular, they continued to believe that gay baiting was a route to political success, and forced several votes in the last Congress on the amendment to ban gay marriage. It has not always been understood how radical this amendment was. While the President sometimes said it was to keep judges from making the decision about whether same-sex marriage should be allowed, in fact it was so worded as to prevent any authority—including a referendum in a particular state—from allowing people of the same sex to marry, and it would have retroactively canceled all of the same-sex marriages in Massachusetts. Once again, the political perception was that the Republicans were on to something, and while a handful of Republicans and a large number of Democrats stood firm to defeat the amendment, many assumed that this would redound to the Republicans’ advantage in the 2006 elections.
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By Barney Frank@ The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide
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